✍ Balthazar, Hildegarde and The Pope / October 2025 DRAFT

Draft

~ Fiction ~

Roman à clef, cher!

Created AI-free

by Leonard Earl Johnson

of Lafayette and New Orleans, Louisiana

 www.LEJ.world ✍ 

⚓

⚓   ⚓

💜💚💛

 *  ~  *  ~  *  ~  *  ~  *  ~  *  ~  *  ~  *  ~  *  ~  

📖

LEJ's 

Louisiana

a monthly e-column at 

www.LEJ.world

October 2025

✍

Yours Truly in a Swamp

by  Leonard Earl Johnson

💫💥💫💥💫💥💫💥💫

Riding on the Donald-go-round,

stretching for the brass ring 

that looks like gold

© 2025, Leonard Earl Johnson,  All Rights Reserved

❤

Best viewed for color contrast on a computer

or phone screen with a black background.

www.LEJ.world

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Your Comments and Corrections

are welcome

Reader's posts accepted after 

First of the Month 

...........❤...........

Balthazar,

 

Hildegarde,

 

and The Pope

by Leonard Earl Johnson

www.LEJ.world 

            

💥

Balthazar stands at the entrance to the Rectory awaiting Hildegarde Bottlebrush opening the big walnut and cutglass doors. 

Hildegarde is the Rector's Housekeeper and the Acadian region's renowned Green Alligator Briefcase repairwoman.  The Green Alligator Briefcases she repairs are part of a D. C. Beltway project designed to promote the Republican Party's curious notion ~ in Louisiana ~ that Global Warming is a hoax.  

Hildegarde knows, "We are in a state seriously losing cities, camps, and oysters to rising warm tides," but Republican briefcase repairs are a welcome income stream, "be thee a believer or not."  The briefcase's purpose is to keep frozen a snowball as proof Global Warming is a hoax. "They have a built-in freezer unit often in need of attention." 

 The Frozen Snowball Project was inspired by the late U. S. Senator James Inhofe (Republican of Oklahoma) to propagate The Party's belief in 

non- Global Warming.  

"When the units fail the snowball melts, see. Then the project fails."  Hildegarde explained this to The Rector, who gave her permission to freelance the work at The Rectory, in her own rooms, on her own time.

"Republicans give me a hundred, two hundred. Whatever. I just take what they offer. Nothing to repairing them, but adjusting a screw built for that purpose on the side of the freezer unit's housing."

💦🌎💦

  Being of Louisiana's German/French Alsace-Lorraine decent, Hildegarde is most heritably good at fixing things and moderately good at holding her tongue 

~ sometimes.

The thought silently tickled through her to say: "They'd probably give me free wine and an alter boy, too, if I asked."  

It would be funny to say that, but Hildegarde knew it would also torpedo The Rector's permission.  She smiled ever so slightly, remembering the uproar Balthazar caused reading, The Little Boy from Big Mamou, at The Bishop's birthday dinner (THE BISHOP TURNED 74 / January 2023).

"All it takes is time, attention, and a place to work. 

"And a screwdriver!" 

  ꩜ 

She pointed to the screw for The Rector's examination.  He nodded knowingly, secure in mechanics gleaned from nights working at a filling station next door to his seminary dorm.

⚔ ✠ ⚔

Balthazar was at The Rectory door presenting Hildegarde with yet another crippled briefcase.  A delivery he was doing as a favor for the two Red Warrior Women aboard his train from 

New Orleans. The two Red Women remained down on Rue Jefferson, near the Rosa Parks train station. They setup a table on the sidewalk outside Rêve Coffee Roasters, where they displayed the frozen snowball removed from the Green Alligator Briefcase.  It is slowly melting inside its crystal-clear plastic cube.

Inside Rêve, The Rector finishes his coffee, drops his cup in the dirty dish basket, and steps outside to examine the Snowball Project's evidence of 

non- Global Warming.  

"You know," he says to Dillard, while holding the cube up to the sun, "The Pope has warned us not to ignore Global Warming. To do so being an affront to God's admonition to be good stewards of The Earth."

Prompted by fading faith, Balthazar observes, after The Rector leaves, "The Pope should be careful Trump don't fly a drone bomber through his bedroom window."

Hildegarde shudders at the thought. She believes strongly what she believes, with no concern about Trump's or The Pope's infallibility.  Or, for that matter, the pessimistic humanism Balthazar has taken to espousing. Too much time reading too much Schopenhauer, she thinks. 

Hildegarde asks, "What profits the person who scuttles their own ship-of-state just to steal their own brass?"

Cajuns are much isolated from outside influences by their tribalism. These two are friends long bonded by place and a deeply seeded belief that it is morally permissible to lift gold coins and banknotes from outlanders splashing through The Swamp, 

be they Texas oil men, Washington Republicans, The Pope, or Schopenhauer.

They cross the parking lot and enter The Cathedral, where they drop five dollars in a slot and light an electric candle for the prayer of their choice.                                                                 On the electric switchbox they place a little orange Voodoo Doll and a plastic pennant bearing the image of Joseph Stalin hanging from Mardi Gras beads.  Also two chicken wishbones and a dried spray of Spanish moss.

Live flaming candles are outlawed in Lafayette Parish churches. The pennant is one Balthazar brought home from Odessa, USSR, many years ago.  After they exit The Cathedral, a custodian watching from the shadows removes the Voodoo Doll and Stalin Pennant and switches off their electric candle.

𑪟 𑪞 𑪞

www.LEJ.world 

            

💥

Next Month's Column

⭐Continuation of the Red Women Warriors Series⭐

            

         * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * 

© Leonard Earl Johnson 

Go here for 
T-Shirts, Koozies, LEJ icebox magnets and such falderal ...

Your Comments and Corrections

are welcome

If you wish to read any month's column go to 

 Archives: www.LEJ.world✍

~   ~   ~

 LEJ's Louisiana, Yours Truly in a Swamp

is a monthly e-column @ www.LEJ.world,

Hosted by GOOGLE BLOGGER,
and historically at

Les Amis de Marigny, New Orleans

publication of the

Faubourg Marigny Improvement Association

It is written by Leonard Earl Johnson

of Lafayette and New Orleans, Louisiana

 www.LEJ.world

 

Your Comments and Corrections

are welcome

Readers comments accepted after publication on the First of the month

🗣😷

© 2025, Leonard Earl Johnson, All Rights Reserved 

⚓The Little Boy from Big Mamou / September 2025

  ~ Fiction ~

Roman à clef, cher!

Created AI-free

by Leonard Earl Johnson

of Lafayette and New Orleans, Louisiana

 www.LEJ.world ✍

⚓

⚓   ⚓

💜💚💛

 *  ~  *  ~  *  ~  *  ~  *  ~  *  ~  *  ~  *  ~  *  ~  

📖

Your Comments and Corrections 

are welcome

🗣😷

LEJ's 

Louisiana

a monthly e-column at 

www.LEJ.world

✍

Yours Truly in a Swamp

September 2025

Dedicated to 

James Nolan, Louisiana Scribe 

September 3, 1947 / August 22, 2025

🌹 

~  *  ~   ~  *  ~   ~  *  ~

by 

Leonard Earl Johnson

© 2025, Leonard Earl Johnson,  All Rights Reserved

Best viewed for color contrast on a computer

or phone screen with a black background.

✍

www.LEJ.world

The Sunset Limited pulls along very slowly creeping beside the Intercoastal Waterway, near Côte Des Allemands.  The name is French.  In English it means, Coast of The Germans.

In German it would be, Küste de Deutschen.  

Everyone uses the French name. It is on a state signpost, though it is not an officially incorporated settlement. 

There are some homes, and a few stores fronting the railroad and waterway. One with a shingle bragging: "Yes, We Have Alligator Meat." 

There are three bridges crossing Bayou Des Allemands, where it opens out to the Gulf of Mexico/America/Trump. Two are for  automobiles and one for the railroad.

 

This is where Balthazar once watched three boys of mixed race mooning the passing train. One boy was blond with white skin, another dusky Mediterranean mixed, and the third black.

Côte Des Allemands

 "That was integration Homer Adolph Plessy never thought about," Balthazar remarked to two red hatted tourists from Texas, who looked at him like he might be speaking Martian. 

 

The mooning inspired Balthazar ~ a little  known fisherman poet ~ to pen barroom ballads which he often sings into convivial free wine, and sometimes a boot out the door.  

He took this morning's opportunity to share one of those bawdy ballads:

🧜‍♂️ 💀 🧜‍♂️

⇓

THE BOY BEHIND THE ALTAR, 

The Little Boy from Big Mamou

by Balthazar Beauregard

© 2025, Leonard Earl Johnson / All Rights Reserved

He was just a little boy from Big Mamou,

 and that's way out in Acadia.  

There a man with a long black limousine 

filled him up with amphetamine, 

and led him to the hot side of The Swamp.

He was wined, dined, and charming.  

His intention was alarming. 

So he say, 'au revoir, Acadia.'  

Like Jean Lafitte he roamed about 

till he came to New Orleans and he found out,

the one you call 'mon cher' ain't your 'mon père'. 

He was young, hung, and lanky, 

and he loved hanky-panky. 

 Every night opportunity would knock.

And now that he's known at the Whitney Bank, 

he's goin' back home and genuflank 

to the one who done him wrong,

 the one who done him wrong, 

the one who done him wrong 

in Big Mamou!

𝅘𝅥𝅰🎵𝅘𝅥𝅯

Then someone broke his heart on Bourbon Street,

 and he ups and leaves Louis-e-an. 

Like a lost Cajun he bum-and-roam,

till an East Village slum become his home. 

 And he laid New York for Louis-e-an. 

He was young, hung, and lanky

 and he loved hanky-panky.

Every night opportunity would knock. 

And now that he's known in the finest clubs 

he's goin' back home and snub the studs,

 the ones who done him wrong, 

the ones who done him wrong,

 the ones who done him wrong

 in Big Mamou.

Then someone broke his heart on Bourbon Street

and he ups and leaves Louis-e-an.

Little lost Cajun he bum-and-roam

Till an East Village slum become his home

and he laid New York for Louis-e-an.

He was young, hung, and charming,

His intentions were alarming.

He took up Daddy-farming in New York.

And now that he's known for finding his stay

up with the stars on ole Broadway, 

he's still that little boy from 

Big Mamou

𝅘𝅥𝅰🎵𝅘𝅥𝅯

His landlord adored him 

and was like a papa toward him, 

till he learned what he earned alone at night. 

 

 And now that he's known in saloons and bars, 

he's movin' back south with six fancy cars, 

to the ones who done him wrong, 

the ones who done him wrong,

 the ones who done me wrong

 in Big Mamou! 

I mean the one who done me wrong,

 the one who done me wrong, 

the one who done me wrong 

in Big Mamou!

💜💚💛 

❤  ❤

💔

When Balthazar finished the train car passengers held their breath.  There was no murmur, no shuffle.  Nothing stirred but the poet-fisherman stepping down from his imagined microphone... 

And the Conductor calling,

"Lafayette, next stop!"

👀 😁 👀

Your Comments and Corrections

are welcome

🗣😷

...............................................

ww.LEJ.world 

Next Month's Column

⭐Continuation of the Red Women Warriors Series⭐

Coming in October: 

Balthazar,

 

Hildegarde,

 

and The Pope

            

         * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * 

© Leonard Earl Johnson 

Go here for 
T-Shirts, Koozies, LEJ icebox magnets and such falderal ...

Your Comments and Corrections

are welcome

If you wish to read any month's column go to 

 Archives: www.LEJ.world✍

~   ~   ~

 LEJ's Louisiana, Yours Truly in a Swamp

is a monthly e-column @ www.LEJ.world,

Hosted by GOOGLE BLOGGER,
and historically at

Les Amis de Marigny, New Orleans

publication of the

Faubourg Marigny Improvement Association

It is written by Leonard Earl Johnson

of Lafayette and New Orleans, Louisiana

 www.LEJ.world

 

Your Comments and Corrections

are welcome

Readers comments accepted after publication on the First of the month

🗣😷

© 2025, Leonard Earl Johnson, All Rights Reserved